Steven Wilson: Do What You Love and the Fans Will Follow

by Bill Kopp

“What I do barely feels like work to me,” says Steven Wilson. “People ask me, ‘Are you a workaholic?’ I respond that to be a workaholic, you’ve got to feel that what you’re doing is work. Making records, that’s not work. It’s fun, isn’t it?”

By any measure, Steven Wilson is one of the busiest musicians working today. In addition to writing, producing and performing with his band Porcupine Tree, he has a steady release schedule of albums by his other projects (solo work, Blackfield, No-man and others). He also produces other artists – most notably Swedish death metal band Opeth – and is in the midst of remixing the vast King Crimson back catalog. He also writes a monthly column in Electronic Musician magazine, and wrote a succinct op-ed piece (“Music Is Not Software; Music Is Art”) in May for the New York Times.

Despite all that activity, Wilson’s primary focus is Porcupine Tree. And Wilson’s songwriting has gone through a number of stylistic phases since the first Porcupine Tree release (the cassette-only Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm in 1989). Early PT sounds leaned in a psychedelic-ambient direction. In those days, Porcupine Tree was simply Wilson recording at home. But over the course of ten-plus studio albums, the band’s distinctive sound has drawn from Beach Boys-influenced pop, progressive rock, and most recently, heavy metal. The group’s last two albums (2007’s Fear of a Blank Planet and 2009’s The Incident) cover a wide stylistic palette, but the group certainly leans in a metallic direction.

The music Steven Wilson chooses to listen to often mirrors (or has an influence on; it’s hard to discern which) where his songwriting will take the band next. So what’s Wilson listening to these days?

“Anything except metal,” Wilson chuckles. “I’m so bored with metal.” He concedes that he goes through “phases, immersing myself in a particular area of music.” But, he says, “I feel like the future [of Porcupine Tree] is going to be a long way from that. I wasn’t being completely flippant: I’m listening to all sorts of things these days. Except metal.”

Wilson suggests that, going forward, he’s most interested in creating music that is “less about songwriting, and more about this idea of music as a story for the ears.” He readily concedes that such a focus has always been evident to some degree in his music, but wants to pursue “a musical continuum that can take the listener on a journey.” He notes that everything he’s currently working on – no less than two or three projects at once – shares one common characteristic. “If anything, the music’s becoming more spacious and less aggressive.”

Wilson has already tipped his hand in this direction on the group’s most recent album. Though it’s broken into fourteen tracks on the CD, The Incident is a single long-form piece of music. “I want to take that idea further,” Wilson states. He’s fascinated by the idea of an album as “an equivalent in some ways to a novel. Although you do get short stories, or short films, most of the important examples in those media are major-length pieces that are telling a story across ninety minutes, or 400 pages.” He muses, “It seems strange to me that music has lagged behind in terms of embracing the larger form. With,” he quickly clarifies, “a brief exception in the 1970s.”

He characterizes the early 80s rise of MTV, with its emphasis on the three-minute pop song/video, as “almost a throwback. It was as if music was afraid of its own potential.” Wilson believes that there’s a movement afoot to return to the idea of music that’s ambitious in its goals, and he points to the success of bands like Muse and the Mars Volta to support his argument.

“In some ways the internet has liberated bands from having to think about being mainstream, from having to try and be commercial,” he says. “And I like to think that people are getting away from the idea that all they want from their music is a three-minute, hummable pop song.” But those unfamiliar with the music of Porcupine Tree should not take from that the idea that the group creates dense, humorless music bereft of hooks or melody. Every PT album has at least a couple of songs with “Single” potential. On The Incident, two of those songs are “I Drive the Hearse” and “Time Flies,” both tuneful, memorable numbers. On the group’s spring tour, the five-piece Porcupine Tree performs The Incident in its entirety, without breaks, and then added in a few fan favorites from their deep catalog. On the summer tour with Coheed & Cambria, Porcupine Tree took more of a “greatest hits” approach, giving a good overview of their music to an audience not as familiar with their body of work.

Steven Wilson embraces the changes taking place in what used to be called the music industry. “Bands have given up the dream of being the next Led Zeppelin, and are instead focusing on what’s important: the music. And it’s much easier now to find a cult audience through the internet, and to survive by selling music directly to the fans.” Wilson views those changes as fostering music everywhere that has “got more integrity than it did at any other time in the last twenty-five, thirty years.”

The King Crimson 40th Anniversary Reissue Project

Steven Wilson was chosen by King Crimson mainstay Robert Fripp to handle the work of remixing and remastering the King Crimson catalog in connection with that band’s 40^th Anniversary reissue series. To date five of these albums have been released as part of this project; reviews of three of these can be found on this site: In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), Lizard (1970) and Red (1974). Late 2010 saw release of two more, the group’s second album In the Wake of Poseidon (1970) and Islands (1971). I spoke with Wilson about his work on those old tapes.– bk

Bill Kopp: With all the work you’ve been doing on the King Crimson catalog, what has been the biggest surprise for you? What have you discovered in those recordings that you perhaps didn’t know was there before?

Steven Wilson: How good 1970s recording engineers were. Because, I’ll tell you, there’s not a lot – in comparison with the way we make records now, which is with an almost unlimited amount of possibilities – those guys were recording on eight tracks, sixteen tracks. They had a very limited amount of overdub possibilities there. You know, they couldn’t really go on an overdub fifteen guitars and make the music sound huge.

So what they did instead was they got great tones; they sounded great in isolation. And it’s almost a lost art; I’ve really learned so much about how [it’s done]. You know, some of Robert Fripp’s guitar sounds on those albums take your head off! And they’re just a single guitar. Now, these days most heavy metal bands, they multi-track their guitars four, five, six, eight, ten times to make them sound huge. But actually very often the end result is that the music gets less heavy, less powerful. Because it becomes more ‘mushy’ and kind of more congested. Those [King Crimson] albums have so much space, and yet they’re so…the contrast between beauty and brutality is phenomenal.

And it’s all about, I think, the economy of recording; a certain knowledge that I think has been lost over the last thirty years or so: of how to make great-sounding records. I’m in awe of some of the sounds on those tapes. I’m in awe of how they got those sounds, really.

BK: I was particularly fascinated to learn that for the new release of In the Court of the Crimson King you were able to go back and get the recording tracks before they were folded down. So you were able to essentially make a new finished recording from sixteen tracks, or however many it was.

SW: I think it was even more than that. The first two albums were recorded on eight-track machines. So what the band would do would be to go into the studio, and they would cut drums and basic backing tracks on one eight-track reel of tape. They would pick their favorite performance, and they would bounce that down to two tracks on a second eight-track. They would then fill up the remaining six tracks with Mellotrons and [other] keyboards. Then they would bounce that down a third time. And only then would they add the vocals, and the flutes and the saxophones. And then that would be mixed down to a stereo track. And then there’d be a fifth generation, because some of the tracks on that album are cross-faded, segued together. To do that, you have to bounce onto a fifth reel.

So the masters they’ve been using for the last forty years have been – in some cases, if you listen to the drums, the basses and the acoustic guitars – five generations [removed from the source tapes]. Everyone knows what it’s like – or at least they should do, if they’re as old as I am! – to bounce from a cassette to a cassette. Even once. Imagine doing that four, five times.

BK: And it still sounded pretty good…

SW: Yes, it still sounded pretty good because they were using great engineers and great technology. But still, when I loaded up those original session reels, and I compared, it was clear that we were going to be able to do something that had never been done before. Which was to compile a master tape for In the Court of the Crimson King using only first-generation, pristine tape recordings. And the difference, I think, is quite clear. I think that anyone can clearly hear it.

BK: Did you have similar material to work with for the In the Wake of Poseidon reissue?

SW: Some tracks, yes; some tracks, no. I think we were very lucky with the first album. The tapes had been fairly well looked after, because it’s such a classic legacy album. The same is not true [laughs] of some of the subsequent albums. For example, we couldn’t find the tapes at all for one of the tracks on Poseidon [“The Devil’s Triangle” – ed.]. But some of the tracks, like the title track, the difference is, as on the first album, phenomenal to my ears. So it’s a little bit more of a patchwork on that album, but certainly we’ve been able to create a new version of the album which hopefully kicks any previous version out of the path. It sounds fantastic.

Audience Taping and the I.E.F. (Incredible Expanding Fanbase)

Not that this writer would ever admit to being a collector of unreleased live and studio recordings – perish that thought – the ethics and controversy surrounding the practice of taping shows is an interesting topic. I asked Wilson about his band’s policy on that practice. We also discussed the group’s ever-evolving fan base. — bk

Bill Kopp: There used to be a pretty active set of fans who traded audience recordings of Porcupine Tree shows. And it seemed — whether it was accurate or not — that you took a relatively laissez-faire attitude toward the practice. but a couple of years ago that changed: the major torrent sites have all dropped Porcupine Tree from their lists (at behest of the band, I assume), and it’s made quite clear to people attending the shows that recording is not allowed. What precipitated the change? I know Robert Fripp is, shall we say — militant in his position on the subject; did his attitude at all influence yours?

Steven Wilson: This is a very complex question, and for one very simple reason: even within the band, we do not have consensus on the issue. Personally, I don’t mind. I don’t mind it. I’m a fan myself, and I understand the appeal of live tapes. And I understand and accept that anyone that trades live tapes is also the kind of person that is going to want to own all of the official studio recordings anyway. So it’s not like it’s robbing us of any royalties.

And I think that the other guys in the band that do object, that’s not their objection. They object to the presumption that it’s okay for someone else to barter and trade our intellectual property. When you buy a concert ticket, you are not buying the rights to record the show and trade it. And I think there was almost a suggestion from some people that they had that right. That is what upset the band. Not that people were doing it; in fact, if people would have not been so irate about it [affects hooligan voice] “We’re doin’ the band a favor, y’know” – I think we would have turned a blind eye. But some people took such an attitude with it: “Other bands don’t mind us doing it; what the fuck makes Porcupine Tree any different?” That attitude [chuckles] really pissed us off. I think at that point we were like, “Right, well, actually you can just forget it.”

But I have to say, I don’t mind it. I do object when I see people sticking microphones up my nose, in the front row. If I see anyone doing that [laughs] I’m going to have security remove them. Because that’s just obnoxious. But I don’t mind if people come and discreetly at the back make a recording of it. And I know that it’s just for their own use, for the superfan.

Yet there are people in the band who don’t feel that way; they feel that we shouldn’t allow anything. So obviously in that situation we have to go with those people. I could talk about this all day, because it’s very complicated. But that’s a brief feel of where we’re coming from, I think.

BK: When I first interviewed you in 2007, it was in person here in Asheville right before you played at the Orange Peel. You played to a packed and appreciative audience. For all the right reasons, the band’s profile has increased quite a bit since then, and in 2010 you played a much bigger Asheville venue, the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. How have the audiences changed in the last few years, if at all?

SW: They have certainly gotten younger. Not completely, of course, but the percentage of young people has certainly gone up. Which is great. And the percentage of females has gone up, too. You know, I’m saying all this because obviously I recognize that in the early years our fan base was somewhat exclusively late twenties, thirties, early forties males. They weren’t teenagers, and they weren’t girls. So that’s changed, and I think that’s definitely a sign that the music has made more of an impact in the mainstream. We’re certainly by no means a mainstream band, but we have crossed over to a market that are less genre-specific.

In the early days our fan base came almost exclusively from people who liked psychedelic music, progressive music, space-rock, et cetera. Those kinds of subgenres of rock music. Now, I think [our fans include] a lot of people who just like rock music. We’ll see people with Radiohead t-shirts, Nine Inch Nails t-shirts, Muse t-shirts. Less of the kind of, you know, Pink Floyd and Hawkwind t-shirts. And I consider that to be a sort of a little victory. Because I never wanted to be a generic band; I never wanted to be tied to a genre. And it used to upset me when we were kind of dismissed or summed up as prog-rock or whatever. Because I thought, there’s lots of things which we do that transcend any genre classification. At least I hope they do.

If I’m going to have anything in my obituary when I die – god forbid, not yet, but when I do die – I hope people are going to say “There was something about his music, their music, that was completely unique.” And that’s hard to do these days, to find something that’s unique. Because so much ground has been covered in rock music in such a short period of time. When people say that something else sounds like Porcupine Tree, to me that’s the ultimate compliment. Even if they don’t like it! The fact that the fan base has expanded, that it no longer comes from one genre, is a compliment. I like that.

Recordings and Other Rarities

Porcupine Tree recently reissued the rare outtakes disc Recordings. I spoke with Wilson about that album and other currently-unavailable material from the band. We also discussed his thoughts on working with other artists, something he does a lot of. — bk

Bill Kopp: Over the last several years you’ve managed to make nearly all of the back catalog available in one for or another, generally upgraded and enhanced in some way. Until its recent reissue, one glaring gap was the Recordings compilation — used copies of which went for hundreds of dollars. And some of your very earliest material like Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape remains unavailable. Do you plan to make additional rarities available at any point?

Steven Wilson: Recordings is one of my favorite of my albums, actually. It was originally put together out of necessity, because we had to finance a tour. And we put that together from some tracks that were left over. Now, the funny thing is, certainly at that time in the band’s career, the tracks that went on the [Stupid Dream] album were not necessarily my favorite tracks. Because I think the band were trying at that time to at least put two or three songs on each album that could maybe get some radio play. You know the old story; every band does that. And some fantastic tracks got left off, and some mediocre tracks got put on the albums. So Recordings was an opportunity to put some of the tracks that I felt were among the best I had written – or the band had written — at that time. And consequently it has become one of our most popular records. It’s certainly one of my favorites.

Why was it out of print for so long? Because it was only intended to be a limited edition. But the band had become a lot more popular since then, and we realized we had to reissue it at some point. And it’s literally just been waiting for a gap in the release schedule! There’s just been [laughs] so much product coming out of the band the last few years. DVDs, new studio albums, live records. And Recordings kept getting shunted to the back of the pile. Finally, I’m happy to say that we found a slot for it. I’m very proud of that album.

As for the early stuff, the opposite is true: I don’t think it’s very good. You know, there’s always a dilemma with a musician. Sometimes they don’t think that certain parts of their back catalogue are very good. And most tracks on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape were things from really early cassettes I was doing in the late 1980s and really early 90s. I don’t think they’re that good, but I understand that there’s always a demand for that form the hardcore fan. What I don’t want to do, is I don’t want to clog up the record store racks – inasmuch as there still are record stores [chuckles] – with what I call our peripheral, fan-only releases.

BK: Right. You want them to be able to find The Incident or Fear of a Blank Planet without having to wade through ten copies of Metanoia.

SW: Exactly. As far as I’m concerned, there’s already some stuff out there which I would consider to be very peripheral, which I would rather was not out. Metanoia is one, and there’s a live album from Poland that we put out on our own label that got reissued. It kind of upsets me in a way when I wander into a record store and I find Metanoia and this album called Warszawa. I thin that a casual fan – one who’s just heard “Blackest Eyes” or “Trains” – might pick one of those up at random, saying, “Oh, I’ll just check this out.” And they’ll wander out with totally the wrong idea of what we’re like. So it annoys me when I see those, particularly [laughs] when those are the only ones there!

BK: You wouldn’t want someone’s first exposure to the band to be Voyage 34, which I love…

SW: I wouldn’t consider it to be among the top ten Porcupine Tree records. But I do recognize there’s a demand. Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape, I guess at some point I will have to think about how to make it available again. Maybe as a download, maybe as a special mail-order-only release. But let’s just say there’s no plans for it right now.

An edited version (of the first part of this feature) was published in the August 18 2010 issue of Mountain Xpress.

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